A LIMERICK CITY Labour councillor has described the health service as being “on its knees” after his 87-year old grandfather languished for a sleep-deprived 100 hours on a trolley in the persistently overcrowded University Hospital Limerick (UHL). 

Councillor Conor Sheehan said he brought his grandfather Jeremiah ‘Jerry’ Mullins to UHL last Thursday afternoon with a severe infection in his leg. 

Sheehan said his grandfather remained on a trolley from last Thursday until last night “uncomfortable and unable to sleep”. 

Almost 90 years old, a “frail” and “confused” Mullins was moved between the chaotic corridors in the hospital’s overcrowded Emergency Department, to a quieter cubicle in the clinical decision unit, before being returned to the stressed ED, as the hospital tried to cope with a record 132 patients on trolleys. 

Sheehan said the health service was “on its knees”. 

“I am so angry I could burst. Every year the same story. Yet nothing ever changes,” he said. 

“This is a complete failure by Government.” 

The UL Hospitals Group apologised in a post on X, formerly Twitter: “@ConorSheehan93 We apologise that this is your experience. Can you please DM us with more information so we can help further. Thank you.” 

”There were supposed to more timely pathways for elderly patients out of ED,” Sheehan complained. 

Sheehan said a health care assistant monitored his grandfather one night while he caught up on work and sleep, but that there were not enough HCAs available to provide continued one to one care. 

He said Mullins had “literally being travelling around the A&E on this trolley for the past five days”.

“I just think that a man at nearly 90 years of age deserves to be treated with more dignify and more respect rather than being out there in a place that is chronically understaffed, as far as I can see.” 

Criticising the UL Hospitals Group, which runs the hospital, Sheehan said: “I do believe they (the government) need to look at the way the hospital is being run.

“The Taoiseach (Leo Varadakar) and the Tanaiste (Micheál Martin) have both being the Minister for Health during the past twenty years, and they both know what the situation is, and this just seems to have been accepted as a fait accompli – that overcrowding is bad in Limerick.

“There are a lot of elderly people who are very nervous about being brought to UHL, they don’t want to be brought to their local hospital if they get sick – and that is really scary.

“You could potentially have a situation whereby you have an older person waiting at home on deaths door, because they won’t go to their local A&E, because they know, for example, that they will be left on a trolley for four or five days.” 

Sheehan said his grandfather was “finally” transferred out of UHL to Croom Orthopeadic Hospital which is used as a destination for patient flow out of UHL last night “after 100 hours in A&E”. 

“It is a horrible indictment of society that this is the way we treat our elderly when they are sick and that we have come to accept this as “normal” in the midwest”,” he added. 

A total of 640 patients, including 27 children, are being treated without a bed in hospitals across Ireland today, according to figures from the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation. 

‘Exceptionally high’ demand

UHL said they would look into the matter but generally do not comment on individual cases. 

A statement released by the UL Hospitals group, as 109 patients languished on trolleys at UHL, offered that a “recent surge in winter respiratory illnesses” had led to increased attendances and “exceptionally high” demand for inpatient beds. 

The group acknowledged that “the level of overcrowding is far in excess of where we want to be, and we apologise to every one of our patients who faces a long wait time for an inpatient bed”. 

It said it was following an “escalation framework to maximise patient flow and create additional capacity to manage the consistently high levels of activity in the hospital”. 

However patients attending the ED with non emergency or life threatening conditions were on for a “significant wait” as “staff are focused on ensuring that emergency care is first received by the sickest patients”. 

The Mid West Hospital Campign Group, set up by families in the mid west region, including those whose loved ones died in UHL after spending significant waits on trolleys in the ED, have repeatedly called on the government to reverse a 2009 health policy to close 24-hour accident and emergency departments in Clare, north Tipperary and St John’s Limerick, and reconfigure these services to UHL.